Looking To The Stars

First, no definite news on Michael Savage continuing to lose sponsors.

Then, I read about this.

Shia LaBeouf is Y: The Last Man?


Why are they rewarding all the hack actors from Constantine with starring roles in comic book movies?

First Djimon Hounsou gets to play Thulsa Doom in a movie that has jack and squat to do with the original Robert Howard novels and is going the extra step of reinventing Thulsa Doom as a flawed anti-hero rather than an Evil with a capital E necromancer.

Doom was a King Kull enemy! And he was never a hero by any stretch of the imagination!

And now, Shia LeBeouf is going to mince his way through an adaptation of one of the best books to come out in the last decade.

Then, I hear about this.

MTV readies 'Rocky Horror' redux

*sighs* What's next? Judd Winick gets permission to write a Jack Knight series?

Of course most of what falls behind the cut isn't really a spoiler if you view the trailer. But just in case you want to go in virgin...

( SPOILERS! )

Yeah. Looking good.

.. but this man doesn't deserve to have a radio show after this. He honestly doesn't deserve to draw breath either. Lucky for him that's not my decision to make.

SOURCE:Conservative Radio Jock Ignites Firestorm After Calling Autistic Children 'Brats,' 'Morons' On Syndicated Show

I don't need to say a damn thing. The quote explains it all:

"I'll tell you what autism is. In 99 percent of the cases, it's a brat who hasn't been told to cut the act out. That's what autism is. What do you mean they scream and they're silent? They don't have a father around to tell them, 'Don't act like a moron. You'll get nowhere in life. Stop acting like a putz. Straighten up. Act like a man. Don't sit there crying and screaming, idiot."

*sighs* For those few of you who don't know, my younger brother is autistic and we have two loving, wonderful and amazingly patient parents. So the idea that someone would call autism a fraud and then go on to use it to make a thinly veiled attack on single mothers is so over the line that Michael Savage somehow just went on to bypass fellow WOR hosts Bill O'Reilly and Dennis Miller as both 'Most Factually Inaccurate Commentator' and 'Most Painfully Unfunny'.

Now, I was just going to e-mail his producers and the man himself to speak my mind. But I can't do it. Because if you go to the home page for his show, the e-mail link has been deactivated.

Cowards, the lot of them!

And the irony meter just broke since his page dubs him "Michael Savage : The Compassionate Conservative".

Still, I guess that's a good sign. It probably means they got fed up with the angry letters of righteously and rightly annoyed people trying to contact them. That still leaves us with a lot of people we can contact though.

So please, if you have a moment, pop off an e-mail to the following people. Make a phone call to 212-642-4500 if you can, as well, just to say that you think this statement is outrageous and that you won't listen to any of their syndicated shows ever again.

Jen Buckley (Sales Manager, WOR) jbuckley@wor710.com
Paul Siebold (Media Relations, WOR) psiebold@worradionet.com
Scott Lakefield (Programming Director, WOR) slakefield@wor710.com

So yeah. Make some calls. Send some e-mails. Tell your friends if you agree with me that this can't stand.

Thank you.

I just got out of a double-feature, movie-marathon session where I saw both movies today.

I also just found out - about ten minutes ago - that one of my dearest and oldest friends, Daniel, just died.

I hope you'll forgive me if I'm not in much mood to talk movies right now. I'll write the reviews later, I promise.

For now though - because I think this would amuse Daniel given how we met through Rocky Horror Picture Show and because he loved George Carlin and any rants about people being stupid - here's a quick list of three socially unacceptable behaviors I'd like to see outlawed at movie theaters.

1. Attempting To Meet New People - There are many good reasons to go to the movie theater, but generally, making new friends is not one of them. I'm at a theater, I'm in the dark, I'm sitting on the back row in the corner, I want to be left alone to focus on the film. I do not want some frat boy with his beer pitcher plopping down next to me, trying to get my opinions on how sacrilegious it is that they are making another Terminator movie without Ah-nold.

2. Inconsiderate Parents- I'll admit this complaint is nothing new, but I found a new sub-strata in this ancient rock today. There have always been parents who refused to take their crying babies, bratty toddlers and inquisitive kindergartners into the lobby when they got noisy. Until today, though, I had never seen a parent who refused to take a child who was scared by a movie home. This one kid behind me was crying - scared, and rightly so, by the antics of The Joker. But this parent... they shhhhed the kid and told them to quit being a wimp.

3. People Who Try To Teach Narrative Awareness To Their Kids At The Theater- For those of you who don't know, Narrative Awareness is the technical term for knowing how a story works. It's knowing cause and effect, how actions lead to reactions and basically being able to have an attention span greater than that of your average summer blockbuster audience. It is one of the six key skills that make up literacy. It is also something that can be easily taught by asking a child questions as you read them a story or watch a show together. It is a very good and wonderful thing to teach your children as early as possible. However, I would venture to say - as a trained professional librarian, mind you - that there are certain places it should probably not be attempted. One of them is a movie theater on opening weekend at a PG-13 movie! And it definitely should not be a movie where you describe the action with the words "So Joker blows up the police station because he's naughty..."

SOURCE:Why The Joker is Batman's greatest nemesis

Yeah. That's me being quoted along with Peter David and Erik Larsen about what makes The Joker tick.

It was supposed to show up with The Dark Knight tonight... but it got leaked early.





If you no likely embedded video, check out: http://www.movieweb.com/video/V08G4asxyEIKST

Oh gods... and it was going so well.

It's not that this comic is bad, really. Parts of it are bad, including...





1) The Cover, which pretty much proves everything everyone ever said about how Frank Cho cannot draw anything other than monsters, animals and women and how when in doubt, he'll always go for the out-of-proportion ass-shot. Also, look at the expression on the woman! You're surrounded by ape-men, a severed head is just inches away from your feet and a big burly man is standing over your body! How can you look bored?

It's a bit like that one skit on Mystery Science Theater 3000, where the robots have Mike trying to guess the emotion Kathy Ireland shows during different scenes of the movie and the answer, no matter how traumatic or shocking the scene, is always "Dull Surprise". Only in this case, Cho can't even manage 'dull surprise'. He has the dull part down, but there's no surprise.

Conan's not helping matters either. He's just standing there posed! No raised weapon. No fierce expression as he growls a warcry or curses in Crom's name. Just a vaugely menacing stare. Which, while appropriate to most social situations Conan is in, hardly seems fitting for facing an entire horde of beastmen.

2) The artwork in the flashback scenes, which is even more out of proportion than the asses of the women in Frank Cho's pin-ups.

3) The story - which isn't all that bad on it's own but... the book is called Conan The Cimmerian! I want to read a Conan story! Not watch Conan cozying up to the fire as a mysterious soothsayer tells Conan stories about his grandfather!

I'm not holding out much hope for the next issue either, since the preview shows YET another posed Frank Cho cover and the flashback ends on a cliff-hanger. But we can hope.

SOURCE:Mark Millar Has “Big Name Action Director” For a Superman Returns Revamp?

I hate to burst your bubbles, Millar-fans, but...

1) Mark's been trying to get this gig for a while now, with no success.

2) Mark's trying to take the momentum from Wanted's sucess and use it to snowball his way into this gig. The big problem is that - relatively speaking - Wanted didn't do all that well. The nicest thing anyone has said about the box-office is that it didn't get crushed going up against Wall-E. That's not shocking. That just means that all the teenagers who wanted to go see a movie and get out of the house this weekend chose to see the only other new movie instead of the kids picture.

3) I'd think if you were trying to get a job writing a character who is synonymous with "Truth, Justice and the American Way", the LAST thing you would want to do is tie yourself to the mast of a comic that is most famous for ending with the main-character insulting the reader and then showing the face he uses as he anally-rapes people. (BONUS QUESTION: Is this a metaphor for how Millar views his fans or an actual declaration of his desire to perform violent acts of sodomy on complete strangers? Discuss.)

4) Even if he is in talks regarding a script, there's no guarantee he'll be asked to write the script or that they will ever use his script. Just ask Kevin Smith about how well received HIS Superman script was, back when he had just made a moderately successful movie, had a ton of comic geek street-cred and everyone was cheering about how there was no way the script could be rejected with an honest-to-goodness comic-book writer working on the script.

5) As much as Mark likes to brag about his Hollywood connections and how in-the-know he is - especially with regards to Warner Brothers - he's been called on his B.S. before and lost.

6) For that matter, he's lied in the past about "sure things" regarding movies based on his work. (i.e. Eminem is DYING to play the lead in an adaption of 'Wanted' .

7) Assuming that Millar is telling the truth about being black-listed at DC Comics (and I think - given everything else we know about Millar's truthiness so far - that's a pretty big assumption), I can't imagine that they would be too thrilled about someone who is signed to an exclusive contract with their main competitor trying to weasel his way into a job.

8) I also can't imagine that his current employers are thrilled about how one of their major name, exclusive contract writers is putting so much effort into pimping for a job with their "Distinguished Competition".

9) Writers in Hollywood have no power. That's why Frank Miller got into producing/directing. So even if Millar does beat the odds, there's virtually no chance of his work going untouched or being recognizable by the time the focus groups are done with it.

10) Warner Brothers' can't be persuaded to make a Wonder Woman or Justice League movie right now - I REALLY don't think they're going to take a chance on another Superman movie bombing.

My friend drderanged has put forth an interesting theory about why Final Crisis has been... well, somewhat confusing and nonsensical thus far.

( WARNING! NOT SAFE FOR WORK COMIC BEHIND THE CUT! )

SOURCE: The 10 Worst Women in Refrigerators (i.e., Cases of Violence Against Women in Superhero Comics) Scenes Ever

You can tell the writer isn't a die-hard reader and seems to have a bit of a grudge against Kevin Smith. Granting that introducing a college rape into Felicia Hardy's background was just a lot of unneeded angst, there's no reason why you should invoke the name of the Holliest of Hollies when discussing how badly Karen Page was treated and not mention the name of Frank Miller?

I'm just saying...

Still, not a bad overall list. I'd have included Ms. Marvel (turned into a sex-slave by her own son from another dimension) and put Gwen Stacy up a lot higher... but for sheer, pointless, plot-driven rape/death, it's hard for me to think of anyone who was more abused than Sue Dibny.

SOURCE: Robert Rodriguez reteams with Rose McGowan in 'Red Sonja'

All I can say is THANK GOD!

The last I heard, they didn't have a director or a writer locked up for this movie and the front-runner for the part of Red Sonja was Megan Fox - i.e. the Magic Girlfriend from Transformers and a woman who apparently couldn't manage the reported directive from director Michael Bay to "just to look hot" when being told what to do during a scene.

And now... oh, now we have Robert Rodriguez set to produce and probably to direct. We have Roy Thomas writing the script, according to Internet Movie Database. And we have Rose McGowan set to play everyone's favorite amazon.

And sure - I can understand people being leery of a director casting his girlfriend in yet another project. If it were any other producer, I'd be worried too. However, there are five reasons why I'm not worried... except because this whole affair sounds too good to be true.


1. Robert Rodriguez has proven time and time again that can make a good, stylish action movie. And however you may feel about Sin City as a comic or as a film, I don't think anyone can deny that Rodriguez perfectly captured the spirit of Frank Miller's comics on camera. This same eye for detail could only benefit a new big-screen adaptation of Red Sonja.

2. Rodriguez is reportedly a big fan of Robert E. Howard's writing and had been trying - before Sin City came out - to take over a long-stuck-in-limbo King Conan movie. If I recall correctly, nothing ever came of it since Rodriguez wanted to film the movie entirely in the Texas Hill Country which inspired so much of Howard's vision of Hyboria and he didn't want to have a big-name actor play Conan. While Sonja isn't precisely a Robert Howard creation, she was born of his work and a director/producer who knew of that history and respected it could only help the production.

3. According to USA Today, Rose is a big Red Sonja fan and a regular reader of the current comic series. While I don't think an actor necessarily has to be a die-hard fan of a series in order to play them well, I do think that it can help with particularly complex characters. At the very least, it can't hurt.

4. Rose McGowan - unlike most of the other actresses who were having their name thrown around for the part - can actually do action scenes. Even before she started appearing in everything Robert Rodriguez did, she's had a reputation as a tough chick. And for what little it's worth, she's a natural redhead.

5. Roy Thomas is writing the script. As in, the man who brought Conan from the pulps to the comics. As in, the man who adapted one of Howard's historical heroines into one of the most beloved icons of post-modern fantasy. Sonja's literary father... writing a script for her. Call me crazy for thinking that's a pretty good sign that The Powers That Be know what they are doing, for once.

I tried to review this book in a conventional way. But Grant Morrison being an unconventional writer and large chunks of this story involving things I can't explain, I find myself unable to do so. Every time I try and write thoughts on this book, it comes out reading like the dialogue of Vic Sage.

So rather than fight this, I've decided to embrace it. So here - with page references - are my random, disjointed thoughts on the first two issues of Final Crisis.

( Final Crisis #1 )


( Final Crisis #2 )

Just now got my comics. Partly due to busy work stuff and partly due to my birthday festivities last weekend.

( As Always, SPOILERS Behind The Cut )

I just saw the movie a week ago on my birthday. Business at work has kept me from writing of it until now. So for what it's worth, here's some of my random musings on The Incredible Hulk.

1. Despite some voices of dissent, I agree with the general consensus of fanboys and the common man alike: This Movie is the Hulk movie we SHOULD have gotten five years ago. There are many reasons this movie is infinitely superior to Ang Lee's "film", even ignoring that this one isn't shot in Panel-Vision.

2. Bruce Banner - Ed Norton was everything that Eric Bana wasn't. And it's not just that Ed Norton is a skinny geek and that Eric Bana was a pretty boy who looked more suited toward being the quarterback on some teen drama show than a tormented scientist. It's deeper than that. It's that Norton sounds smart enough to utilize all the scientific terminology that the film requires and that he manages to convey tension in a subtler manner than Bana, who went through most of Hulk looking like he really had to go to the bathroom.

3. Betty Ross - Jennifer Connolly went through Hulk on auto-pilot, spending most of the movie looking doped up on Nyquil and speaking of and to Bruce with all the passion and intensity of a woman reading the phone book. Love him or hate him, she didn't sound the least bit like an on-again/off-again girlfriend. In wide contrast, Liv and Ed are a very convincing screen couple. You honestly believe that Liv is conflicted about whatever feelings she had for Bruce and the life she has rebuilt for herself, but she's also strong enough to make the right choice and damn the consequences when her controlling father forces his way back into her life. Which isn't exactly in keeping with Betty's portrayal in most of the early comics, but hey... I like this Betty Ross.

4. General Ross - One of my favorite comedic movie review sites noted in their review of Ang Lee's Hulk that General Ross was the most sympathetic character in the movie. In retrospect, I think they were right and I think this is one of the signs of just how far off the mark Ang Lee's Hulk was. You can chalk most of that up to a much-better-than-this-movie-deserves performance by Sam Elliot, but the minute Thunderbolt Ross becomes the most likable character in your Hulk story is the same minute that you stop writing The Hulk properly. By contrast, William Hurt played General Ross as the xenophobic, guns-a-blazing, macho military stereotype that we all love to hate.

5. Tangent #1 - All of Stan Lee's comics from the 60s - whether intentional or not - did explore certain aspects of the culture of the time. Of course we all know that X-Men explored the issues of racial strife and inequality, but did you ever stop to consider how the role of the media in politics was repeatedly analyzed in Spider-Man? Or how The Fantastic Four was a commentary upon The Space Race and the dangers of science advanced without morality? Or Iron Man being a metaphor for the conflict between Western and Eastern culture? Similarly, The Incredible Hulk was similarly just as much about the dangers of an unrestrained military in American life (and, to a lesser degree than The Fantastic Four, the importance of morality in science) as it was about the Jekyl-and-Hyde conflict within Bruce. General Ross frequently caused just as much damage as The Hulk in his efforts to capture or kill The Hulk - all with Uncle Sam's approval and Your Tax Dollars At Work.

6. Tangent #2 - Actually, this brings to mind another question. How the hell does General Ross keep avoiding being court-marshaled for gross incompetence? I know that in the comics he was eventually kicked out of the military (Even today, the comics are still uncertain as to whether or not Ross is in the Air Force or the Army) but that was due to his committing high treason when he made an alliance with The Leader, MODOK and The Abomination. Now, I'll admit to not being an expert on military procedure, but isn't it standard practice for American military courts to sentence anyone convicted of treason to death rather than dishonorably discharging them? Regardless, over the course of the movie, he sends armed troops into two separate, highly-populated civilian population centers - one a crowded barrio, the other a college campus. You'd think they could have quietly evacuated at least PART of the area or established a perimeter to keep people out of the area once they had Bruce Banner surrounded. Further, even granting that certain information must be kept on a need-to-know basis within the Chain of Command, one might think that it would be a good idea to mention to the field commander of your team of Hulk Busters that "Oh, by the way - this scientist we're sending you to catch might suddenly change into a big green monster capable of destroying buildings if you make him angry or miss your first shot with the tranquilizers". You know, just on the odd chance that your team of soldiers fail their Will Save vs. Terror roll when they see a big hulking monster unlike anything they've ever seen before. I'm just saying...

7. Emil Blonksy/The Abomination - despite a convoluted means of explaining why we have a British actor playing a character who originated as a Russian spy, who is now working for the American Military... not bad at all.

8. On that note - the most obvious reason this movie was better than Ang Lee's? Actual monster fighting. Hulk Smash, indeed. :)

9. And on that note of that note, the special effects were a LOT better. You can blame a lot of that on the effects for Ang Lee's Hulk having been 12 years in the making. But 12 years to make a bigger, badder Gumby and some evil hell hounds... too much for too little.

10. Lots of set-up for a sequel, even ignoring the obvious nods at an Avengers movie. The Super Soldier formula came into play and they set the stage for Doc Samson and The Leader to be introduced down the line. I can't wait for the DVD were there will apparently be even more footage tying into the characters and - if rumor is true - a Captain America cameo.

SOURCE: 'Wanted's' effect debated

I got to be the voice of dissent/angry comic book guy in an article about the new movie (very loosely) based on the comic book Wanted.

The only reason I'm mentioning here (apart from shameless self-promotion, of course) is because of one very odd line that I'd like to explain.

"Even with the loose adaptation they seem to be going with, the base concept - a bunch of amoral killers secretly rule the world and a hapless newbie is brought into the fold - would suggest that this is not going to be a chick flick."

Why the chick flick comparison? Well, that line came from a separate part of the e-mail Q&A I had with Mister Maida. He had asked for my opinion on the fact that Fox - the character Angelina Jolie plays in the movie - was originally an African American woman in the comics (and indeed based on Halle Berry) and asked if I thought this had any relevance - for good or ill - on the movie's potential success.

I said, half-jokingly, that it probably meant that Hollywood had finally realized that Halle Berry + Superhero Movie = Bad Idea, and that given how the character was a Magic Girlfriend (that's my term for any action movie heroine who fulfills all the requirements of The Mentor and The Love Interest in one convenient package), it hardly mattered if she was Black or White given that the character was an exploitative cliche regardless of the color of her skin.

He replied back and asked me to defend the idea that the character of Fox was exploitative and how could I know - given how wildly different the comics and the movie are supposed to be - that the character of Fox in the movie would be as bad? How could I say that the character in a movie I hadn't seen and had no intention of seeing would be insulting to all women everywhere?

My answer? Angelina Jolie is playing her.

Now, I won't deny that Angeline Jolie is a talented actress when it comes to playing certain types of characters. If you need someone who can play the tough but sexy girl or the bad girl, then Angelina is your woman. I've known this since Hackers.

But let's not kid ourselves - the main reason that Angelina Jolie is popular has less to do her ability to convey all of the nuances of Lady MacBeth and more to do with her willingness to be eye-candy.

There's not a lot of people watching the Tomb Raider movies for the feminist subtext. That's all I'm saying.

And as I also said, Fox is a Magic Girlfriend. Like Valeria in Conan the Barbarian. Like Trinity in The Matrix. She is the perfect woman, whose main purpose in the movie is to...

a) discover the Hero while he is a hapless newbie and guide him down the path to destiny.
b) become the hero's love interest
c) be the token woman in "the team" (if the Magic Girlfriend is not the only woman on the team, she will be one of the few and will definitely be the most attractive)
d) sacrifice herself to save the hero or further the hero's cause.

And that is where and why I made the oddly out-of-place statement above. "Even with the loose adaptation they seem to be going with, the base concept - a bunch of amoral killers secretly rule the world and a hapless newbie is brought into the fold - would suggest that this is not going to be a chick flick."

So yeah. That's why. In case you wondered.

Here it is. Personal accounts and personal theories upon the biggest disaster to face Dallas since the Kennedy Assassination.

( One Night In FedCon Makes The Hard Man Crumble... )

And now... the stuff I wasn't there to personally witness and thoughts on the sad aftermath.

( The Aftermath )

Still, some good has come of this. Tim Brazeal's officially done with conventions according to his own son.